1 Day in the Life: The Simon Initiative and Carnegie Mellon’s Digital Education Revolution

The success of OLI methods of integrating learning science into the educational experience is explored in this One Day in the Life article, which includes a video interview with OLI Director Norman Bier and two students who used the OLI platform when taking a computer science class for non-majors. The article tracks the experience of students who are benefiting from the use of transformational educational technology at CMU:

This semester, 15–110is a “blended course,” combining in-class meetings with CMU’s own educational technology that is designed to improve and accelerate student learning.

Tonight, Eristoff is watching videos and working through practice problems using software that lets her know when she is making the right-and wrong-choices. The immediate feedback is a hallmark of CMU’s Open Learning Initiative (OLI), which has dozens of high-quality online courses in topics from computer science to English. OLI also tracks how students respond to each lesson and problem and then uses that data to continuously improve the course. Blended classes like 15–110 use OLI modules to help Eristoff learn more at a faster pace.

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This approach works: studies have shown that in Carnegie Mellon’s OLI courses, students can master twice as much course material in half the class time, and there is evidence that they retain more material.